New Merc ability -- Chaos in the Court

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

Day ability: Chaos in the Court – Usable only during trial executing her original contract, the Mercenary disrupts the trial by sacrificing her own life and killing one that voted for execution. The desperate murder buys time for the contract to flee to their room for the night, preventing a second trial that day.

Genesis of this idea was to figure out a way to let a Mercenary double down on her original target, instead of the plain Jane, pick a winner the second time around strategy. Might be a bit much in late game situations – but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it could create some really hype situations. People love trial drama!

#2

welp…

suiciding…

#3

Might be a good idea…

Maybe usable like from D3 and onward?

#4

Marl (Accuser): “alright guys everybody pardon, this claim seems legit”
Merc: “Sorry guys, gotta go!” (Contract is BD)
Chaos in the Court
The Mercenary has sacrificed themself to kill the accuser!
Marl [4] was the Prince.

1 Like
#5

More like:

Marl [4] was the Mastermind

#6

How does this improve the gameplay, though? You’re effectively increasing the impact of the randomly-assigned benefit of a Mercenary. And whether it’s the Prince or the Mastermind killed by this ability, I don’t feel it would feel very good for everyone else (most of the time it would feel fairly random.)

I think the gameplay would be better if we just allowed Mercenaries to betray their first target, rather than giving them ridiculously swingy abilities like this that can drastically change the direction of the game in one click. It’s better to try and smooth out the impact of having a Mercenary assigned to you at the start (by introducing the possibility that they may betray you), rather than amplifying it by giving them a drastic ability like this.

#7

This doesn’t really discourage people from thinking you are evil, and then killing you the next day. I think it would be better if Mercenary held some sort of leverage instead, to discourage the execution of their target. I had one idea for something to pull this off here, since it only acts if the target is executed, since it can help people avoid the effects of Rebound, while also helping out the Mercenary.

#8

I don’t think Mercs should have any way to protect their target against being lynched (aside from the threat of a rebound on a failed vote.)

It would be too powerful for a randomly-assigned neutral role, and at the end of the day Mercenaries are supposed to protect their target with arguments (eg. lying to defend them), not ridiculous abilities.

#9

That’s more of an encouragement to get the lynch through. If you kill them, you don’t need to worry about a Rebound.

Not saying it’s a perfect or even good ability, I’m just saying it is an idea.

#10

To be clear I mostly think this would be fun and add atmosphere, like hunter trials do. It would also spice up merc and merc claims a bit, as it is it’s pretty boring – you’re just thinking about whether to use one of 4 guard charges with little else going on.

About 2nd contract, it certainly doesn’t fix any of that controversy – it does make it clearer though that Merc should particularly care about their first contract.

I guess some people might feel they HAVE to use it ? Which isn’t intended, if people want to give up on contract one, I think its fine as long as they don’t work against them… at least that’s my interpretation of the ruling.

Also Marl, I had some idea that it would only work if the trial vote ended in exe – Merc would just queue up the ability, and if the vote ended in exe, they’d yolo.